The First Time I Saw Your Face (26 page)

‘No, that’s the trouble,’ Alex replied grouchily, ‘the public doesn’t want to know anything about the reality of farming, just wants to pick up their cheap chickens in the supermarket.’

‘Do you do chickens then?’ Mack asked innocently and saw Jennifer’s flick of a smile.

‘No, of course I don’t do chickens. Whatever “do” means. I
do
sheep. I was just quoting an example.’

‘Well, I always buy organic anyway.’ Mack got up quickly. ‘I should go. I’ll get the bill.’

Alex did a little flap of his hand. ‘It’s all right, we’ll add it to ours.’

Ours? Jennifer’s face is suggesting there is no ‘ours’.

‘And I’m sorry if I interrupted anything earlier.’ Mack saw the little sideways glance that went with Alex’s words.

‘Matt’s been having girlfriend trouble,’ Jennifer said very quickly. ‘I was just trying to cheer him up.’

Girlfriend trouble? You’re avoiding telling him she’s history. Keeping everything sweet as usual.

‘Oh dear, really? Never mind, you’ll soon be back in Bristol. I’m sure it’ll sort itself out then.’ Alex’s satisfied smile made Mack feel as if he’d been dismissed.

Get out of here before you rise to the bait and say something stupid.

‘Actually we’ve split up,’ Mack shot back.

The momentary satisfaction of seeing Alex’s expression fracture was replaced by the knowledge that he had quite
unnecessarily made him suspicious and, worst of all, probably made Jennifer wonder why he was winding him up.

‘Bus to catch,’ he said before he could do any more damage and left Jennifer to deal with any fallout.

CHAPTER 24

Crossing over the dual carriageway, they headed off down a side road that narrowed and meandered between high hedges, adding to the impression that they were alone on some secret path. Jen wound down the window and took a deep breath.

‘That smell,’ she said, ‘always gets me.’

‘Sorry,’ Matt replied, ‘is it my feet?’ Jennifer laughed, remembering as she set off up that rising scale, to show some restraint: she might feel like whooping and hollering, but she had to keep a lid on this happiness. Matt was simply being shown a beach. She didn’t know what she was being shown, but it felt pretty wonderful.

‘It’s the sea,’ she said, curtailing the laugh. ‘Go on, smell it.’

He put his window down and theatrically took in huge lungfuls of air and just as theatrically coughed it all up again. Her hair started to blow around in the crossdraught.

‘Not enough pollution for me,’ he said, but she noticed
he left his window down. She gave her full attention to the road again, but the smell of salt lurking in the air was setting off all kind of residual memories of long days on the beach, brushing sand off her skin, trying to get a comb through her hair after the wind and sea had been at it. There had been rare, hot days, but mainly ones like this: blue sky, a sharp zing to the air and the feeling you were on the edge of the world. Anything was possible.

She had worried away at the weather forecasts since he had thrown down that challenge to show him the beach and had been rewarded with this, a day so bright she had to put her sunglasses on to drive. She watched the hedgerows pass, the forsythia in bloom in gardens and was struck again by the sharpness of the light. There were one, two, three clouds away to the east, strung out as if they were too lazy to bother to really be clouds.

‘Still don’t know how you get the sky so big up here,’ he said.

‘Special rollers, camouflaged so you can’t see them.’

It was him laughing now and she knew that if she looked his hair would be blowing around as hers was, and he’d be doing that thing with his hand where he pushed it back any old how and scrunched up his eyes to look through it when it blew down again.

‘Much further?’ he asked.

‘Just through here and round the bend a bit,’ she said, driving past low houses and a school. When the road headed upwards she felt suddenly bold, ‘Close your eyes. If you want the full experience, you have to close your eyes.’

‘Now, Jennifer,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen pictures already. I do my homework, you know.’

She slowed the car to a stop and gave him a look, glad he couldn’t see her eyes properly behind her sunglasses.

‘OK, OK,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I’ll go for the full experience.’ When he closed his eyes she forced herself to look forward again.

That’s what he looks like asleep. Ready for kissing awake.

He made a noise and she turned to look at him again.

‘Sorry?’

‘Nothing. Just a bit of non-polluted air stuck in my throat.’

‘Sure?’

He nodded and she set off again, waiting until the car had come over the hump of the hill and was on the other side before slowing to a halt again and turning to look at him. She wanted to see that moment when he opened his eyes.

‘OK, here you go.’ She watched his face and there it was: genuine surprise and then a kind of incredulity. A little boy with his bucket and spade.

‘Tell me this is a film set?’ he said, looking at the view and then at her and back at the view, but she was too happy to want to answer and probably would have sat there for much longer if a car had not suddenly come up behind them.

‘Let’s go and park,’ she said.

*

They walked down the road that ended at the beach and Mack let his face do whatever it wanted in reaction to the sight in front of him. Spread out before them was a bay of almost apricot-white sand. Two lines of low rocks ran out to sea at either end of it, creating an impression that the sea here was enclosed. That impression of shelter and cosiness was echoed by the way the beach was backed by high dunes covered with long, pale green grass. Dotted amongst the grass were huts and larger cabins and the whole feeling was of a little community hunkered down, nestling right on the edge of the sea. That alone would have made it a beautiful place, but what propelled it into the magical league, the kind of place that got into your brain like a siren song, was the feature that dominated the skyline – a ruined castle lying like a mauled and shattered crown on its massive sill of rock. It was impossible to look at it without imagining skeleton knights and ghostly ladies, storms and dungeons, bloody deeds. The juxtaposition of such ruined grandeur next to the tranquillity of the beach did strange things to the viewer’s sense of perspective, and Mack felt that in mist or driving rain it would have cast a sinister, haunting air over the place. Today, in full sun, it was simply stunning.

‘So let me get this right. You’ve got the perfect beach, the sea, little houses, a great wreck of a castle.’

‘And one of the best pubs you’ll ever go in—’

‘I’ve been in a few.’ He wasn’t sure Matt Harper would have said that, he was going to have to be careful. Mind you it wasn’t as big a clanger as the one he’d nearly dropped when she’d told him to close his eyes in the car and he’d
almost said, ‘I hope you don’t do the same.’ That would have reminded her nicely of her accident.

They passed hikers and families, people in wetsuits and he was so intent on the view he didn’t watch the people watching Jennifer.

‘So you’ve been coming here since you were a little girl?’

She was smiling, had taken off her sunglasses. ‘Yes. Dad’s not one for the beach, but Mum is. She grew up in Wallsend by the river – her dad worked in the shipyards – she came here on the odd day trip with her mum. She loves it and so do I.’ There was a shy little glance his way.

‘She’s not a farmer’s daughter then?’

‘Mum? No. Met Dad when she was a teacher, she’d brought her class on a farm visit. That was when Granddad was still running the farm.’

The knowledge that Brenda was from what he suspected was a tough background took his mind off the view for a while and they walked on side by side, Jennifer shading her eyes to look out to sea and then towards the beach huts.

‘I’ve always wanted one of those,’ she said. ‘I mean, I love the countryside, but imagine waking up to the sound of the sea, the whole day stretching away to the horizon.’

‘Couldn’t you save up for one?’

She bent and picked up a piece of driftwood, unwinding skeins of seaweed from it. ‘It’s not as easy as that. They hardly ever come up for sale. They’re usually passed down and kept in the family.’ She threw the stick into the sea. ‘It’s a nice dream.’

Another one you’ve shelved and put away.

‘How’s the novel going?’ she suddenly asked.

He thought of it lying unloved on his laptop. ‘Great, wrote another chapter last night.’

‘Good. I’m so glad you didn’t give it up. Aren’t you?’

‘Yes, very. Look, do you fancy a sit-down?’

They walked up the beach and found a sheltered spot, and the sun sparkling on the sea was so bright that it made his eyes water.

She was sitting right next to him and when the wind blew her hair it flicked his face. He should move. Put some distance between them. He should work the conversation round to Cressida.

He watched her watching the sea and felt he didn’t know how to do this any more.

‘They get seals coming in here sometimes,’ she said.

‘I might meet them later; I’m going to have a paddle.’

‘It’ll be freezing.’ She scooped up a handful of sand and looked as if she was feeling the weight of it, her hand bouncing slightly, and he told her about going in the sea with Doug.

She tipped the sand out. ‘I hope he’s careful in the water. The current there is treacherous.’

‘I wonder if the beaches in California are like this?’ He waited a few seconds. ‘How’s your cousin getting on with that lady married to that man Ralph?’

‘Rory,’ she said, giving him a playful push. ‘You really don’t take much interest in films, do you?’

He pushed her back. ‘I remembered it began with an R
and that you were going to tell me how she was getting on when we were in the café.’ He grinned and wished he hadn’t because he wondered if she would think he was remembering how he’d put his hand on hers.

Clearing away some dry sand near where he was sitting to reveal the wetter layer beneath, he began to trace a pattern with his little finger.

Jennifer wondered what that grin had meant. Was he remembering putting his hand over hers?

Don’t run ahead. You promised Cress you wouldn’t run away, but don’t run ahead.

‘Well Rory is a bit of a naughty boy,’ she said, knowing he wasn’t really interested and was just being polite. ‘I told you his wife is jealous and it’s hardly surprising. He’s pursuing Cress right under her nose. A low spot came the day before yesterday when he turned up in her trailer. It was only the runner knocking on the door that stopped her having to slap him right down. As Cress said, “He was trying to get his hand round my U-bend.” Oh, sorry, that won’t make much sense. Cress and I tend to talk in a kind of code, you see, when there’s anything sensitive being discussed. We call Rory the plumber, hence the joke. But it’s not funny. Hard to say no to someone who’s as big a player as Rory.’

‘Poor Cressida.’ His brown eyes looked so regretful that she wanted to put her arm around him.

‘Don’t worry. Cress, clever clogs, worked out a little strategy.’ She scooped up some more sand and watched
the little rivulets run through her fingers. ‘She waited for the next inevitable incident and had a full-on panic attack. She’s really good at those … got us out of a couple of dreadful parties when we were younger. She’s told him that she does fancy him like mad, but the pressure of the filming and his wife glowering at her is just too much and she’s teetering on the brink of nervous exhaustion.’ She laughed. ‘Said that she’d give him an IOU on the sex thing, for when the film was over, otherwise she just knew she’d have to have a break from filming.’

‘That would be bad, wouldn’t it?’

‘Disastrous. I think Rory could see the dollars actually going down the drain. Since then he’s been treating her like a piece of porcelain, even leaving little presents in her trailer. And she’s had a breakthrough with the wife too; she’s showing Cress how to knit. Does these amazing cobwebby wall hangings, evidently.’

‘You have a very clever cousin,’ he said, and she saw him rub out the pattern he had made and begin again. ‘I’m presuming she’ll never honour that IOU?’

‘She’ll run as fast as her Manolo Blahniks will let her.’

‘Manolo?’

‘Shoes, stylish and expensive ones.’ She purposely did not look at his horrible brogues. She looked at him instead, wondering how she could have become so attracted to this slightly naive guy, so different from the ones she’d gravitated towards at uni. In a strange way, she felt protective of him, sitting there looking first puzzled and then with
that sweet sadness about him. Was he still thinking about Sonia?

‘OK,’ he said, standing up, ‘time for a paddle,’ and he was running down to the sea. She watched him take off his shoes and socks and looked at his bare feet and felt a spasm of lust. How pathetic, she was turned on by his feet. She got up and followed him down to the water’s edge as he rolled up his horrible jeans, and laughed at the faces he was making while he waded in up to his calves.

‘Bet you can’t stay in for a minute,’ she called, starting to time him on her watch, and then on the spur of the moment as he was coming out, gasping and teeth chattering, gathered up his shoes and socks and ran away from him.

She ran on before she was brought to a halt by a sharp tug on her coat and then she felt Matt’s arms come around her and he was trying to get her to drop the shoes. Her heart was pounding more from having him so close than from the exertion and she knew she would look hot and flustered. He was breathing heavily too, fumbling to try to get a grip on one shoe. She let him have it and peeled away from him with the other, running backwards as he came after her. Suddenly anxious about the way he was piling towards her, she threw the shoe she was holding up the beach towards the sand dunes, and balled the socks and threw them too. She thought he would stop and gather everything up, but he didn’t, he kept on running and then suddenly
she was upside-down over his shoulder and screeching and he was heading for the sea.